Fate chat and game room

Magician

06:21

Here's a declaration of a story detail if I ever saw one:

BESW

06:32

Bwheheheh.

That is an excellent ARRPG declaration.

BESW

06:47

...actually.

I think it's probably at least equally likely that's a Fate point spent for a re-roll.

(And this is one of the awesome things about Fate: there's rarely just one mechanic to represent a particular narrative.)

Magician

I think it'd depend on the aspect being used. If it's Apollo Retroreflectors, it's a reroll. If it's Space Engineer, it's a declaration of Apollo Retroreflectors being a thing.

BESW

Yeah.

Stack Exchange

08:13

0

Q: How to handle the magical girl genre in FATE?

I'm a newcomer to FATE, and working out a magic system is daunting. I have read over the core and glanced through the system toolkit as well, but some experience-based advice would be helpful (particularly from those who have played superhero games in FATE with defined magic systems). I'm trying...

BESW

08:44

@Tynam [wave]

Tynam

10:00

Hi @BESW. (Sorry I missed your wave; just clicking through...)

BESW

No worries.

I assume you're here from the Magical Girl link.

Tynam

Yep. And to read recent backlog; I've been offline a lot due to real world roleplay and stuff recently, and I've missed a lot of the FATE discussion. Which matters, because I'm GMing it more these days.

(Just finished a fun couple of Dresden adventures.)

BESW

Cool.

My group just finished up the Dresden Files Accelerated playtest last week.

Tynam

How's it been going?

(Haven't tried it yet; was too busy catching up with other gaming...)

BESW

It's--well, I've come to the realisation that the Dresden Files setting is not one I can run games in very well, but setting that aside: the playtest mechanics are quite clever and mostly work out okay.

Tynam

10:07

That's about as much as I'd expect from a simplified system running such a complex world.

BESW

Evil Hat said the playtest isn't designed to deal with PCs of different power levels working together, but in practice it falls apart if any characters of different power levels are working together.

Tynam

(What limits your Dresden GMing? I ask with curiosity: I just ran two groups in parallel on very different adventures, and one went much better than the other. I still haven't put my finger on what went differently and why.)

Hmmm... yes, I can see that. Accelerated will only magnify the effects of power difference.

And even normal Fate doesn't handle large power imbalance that well.

BESW

@Tynam For me, it's that the setting itself is aggressively and violently opposed to anyone trying to change the status quo. Which is kinda what PCs are all about.

@Tynam Well, that's the thing. The playtest was specifically about testing a new mechanic to represent power variance, layered on top of regular FAE rules.

Tynam

Ah. (I haven't been following the recent DAE playtests.) That makes sense then.

Some day I'm going to run a campaign where the players are all desperately trying to maintain the status quo.

(My live game "Dr. Nefarious" comes close...)

BESW

@Tynam Given what we know about the nature of the Winter Court, and the delicate balance of power that runs through the entire supernatural world, effectively disrupting the status quo on almost any level can potentially result in either the destruction of the entire universe, or (best case scenario) a nuclear war and an ice age.

But only the highest-up creatures in all the world know all those details, and the rest of the equilibrium is generally upheld unknowingly through balanced struggle of people who don't know that they can't ever achieve a meaningful victory or the world will end.

Tynam

10:14

I don't see that as a problem. You can't ever achieve a meaningful victory *over the Fae Courts*, but the rest is up for grabs. And one major theme of the books is that the personal victories are ultimately more important than the fate-of-the-world ones - a theme that Fate plays with well.

Harry wiping out the Red Court is a pretty major status quo change, but it doesn't endanger the universe. Just stir up the crawly things under the rock. The books do rather suggest that "new and unlikely status quo" is an option, just that you won't ever get advance warning of what that is.

BESW

I'm not sure it's reasonable to say the Red Court's death didn't endanger the universe, but it's been too long since I've read the books to hold forth on specifics. The general impression I get is that the Courts and all the other players play such long, convoluted power games that it's impossible to know which strings have armageddon on the other end of them.

Also, I find the Laws of Magic extremely difficult to work with in an RPG.

Not because my players are murderhobos, but because once someone is even suspected of violating a Law, it basically takes a deus ex machina to keep the rest of the campaign from being about running from the Wardens and anyone else the Council might hire to track you down.

Tynam

I agree with you about that problem, but it's possible to work with and use that threat. The key is that the Wardens are *also* desperately undermanned, and reluctant to start political trouble.

In my last game, one player - who has broken the first law and killed with magic - was surprised by a Warden showing up at work and (by compel) attacked him out of panic reflex. She *still* got away with it, because another player was an emissary of power - so claimed the attacker as hers, apologised formally, and promised to be responsible for her in future. The Wardens don't want to start trou…

BESW

Similarly, any technology or discovery in an Atomic Robo game which would fundamentally alter day-to-day life on Earth must be covered up, lost, or otherwise kept from the public because Atomic Robo's world is one in which Weird Science stays in the corners. If this kind of suppression happens too often, it starts to strain credulity.

Tynam

Yes, very much so.

(It's the Reed Richards problem. If he's actually that smart, then modern Marvel tech and economy has to look fundamentally different from our Earth. Which breaks the setting. So he has to be stupid about being smart.)

BESW

@Tynam Our DFAE game started out with two of the PCs being hunted by a Warden for inocuous violations of the Laws.

Tynam

10:24

Ah, I see. That makes it an issue, yes.

BESW

The whole two-month-long story was basically three days of "OH GOD A WARDEN WHAT DO WE DO."

It concluded with faking their deaths in an explosion.

And making a pact with the Summer Knight.

And now they are constrained by oath and by practicality to hide out in a remote Hawaiian village for the foreseeable rest of their lives.

Tynam

...well, it's *a* resolution.

I choose to work primarily with the Wardens being understaffed. As with real cops - you're in real trouble if they fixate on you, but if you keep your heads down and don't do anything spectacular, there's a really good chance that they'll never notice you at all. They're busy.

BESW

Yes, well. One of them was a pyromancer who thought he'd gotten everyone out of the building, but someone saw an excellent opportunity to get rid of a body.

Tynam

...that would be noticeable, yes.

(Good material for personal angst too, presumably.)

BESW

Eh. He was a gangster enforcer and the dead guy was from a rival gang.

And the other was a mind-reader who used his powers to be a better bartender. Then he met a psychometrist (things talked to her when she touched them) and he used his powers to help her get quiet in her head.

The mind-reader got tipped off that a Warden was after him, and he and the psychometrist fled to a quiet Hawaiian village off the grid... which turned out to be the headquarters for a big gangster.

We started the game with the Warden stepping off the boat into the village.

It was particularly interesting because most of the players knew very little about the Dresdenverse, and their characters knew even less about the White Council than their players did: they were all minor talents, einherjars, and a troll-blood changeling, none of whom had any knowledge of the Council except rumours, and the minor practitioners had received a single visit from a Warden to tell them about the Laws, years ago.

So when a Warden showed up, there was carefully restrained panic.

Tynam

10:33

Also makes sense. The wardens are the FBI SWAT team of the dresden world - you don't exactly expect to meet them at your house.

Although, the Wardens are better disciplined and less likely to kill innocents than a real SWAT team... ;)

BESW

And as soon as the Warden got a lay of the land, he started threatening to call the FBI in to arrest the entire village for collusion with the gangsters, because he knew the PCs wouldn't want that.

Tynam

Oooh, fun.

BESW

...this backfired on him extraordinarily when the gangster pyromancer used it to call in some guns for the final battle.

The PCs knew they couldn't kill the Warden or the White Council would make an example of the village--at least, that's what the Warden said--but they engaged in a firefight with him at the gang's hidden weapons bunker, to set up an explosion in the bunker that appeared to kill both the PCs he wanted.

Tynam

Nice.

BESW

Next week we're going to pick up the Doctor Who FAE game I'd started before the playtest, and then we'll probably try Atomic Robo.

Tynam

10:43

We've got a running Who game in AiTaS. That system's working so well, I don't think we'll port to FATE.

(Really want to try out Save Game now, though...)

BESW

I ran it as a one-shot to celebrate the Twelfth Doctor's first seasion, with potential for expansion into a short campaign, and we weren't interested in learning a new system for that.

It's been working quite well, though. I made a bunch of Classic characters as pre-mades.

Actually, wait. Let me find the pdf version...

Doctor Who Accelerated: The Doctor and nine classic companions.

Tynam

Ooooh, thanks.

BESW

It's a generic Doctor, and some of the companions are slightly re-interpreted (especially Kameleon and Adric, and Nyssa had to get aggressively extrapolated into a useful shape for Fate).

Tynam

Who doesn't exactly thrive on detailed continuity, anyway.

Rewrite for the new season!

BESW

We ran with the Doctor, Kameleon, Leela, Sarah Jane, the Brig, and K-9 (it was a big group that night!).

By the end of the session, the Nestene Consciousness had used modified Cyberman technology to mind-control Leela into stabbing the Doctor, forcing him to regenerate.

Tynam

10:50

Brilliante!
(That's why I had two Dresden groups; 7 players is too many for one.)

BESW

(Regeneration meant changing one of his permanent character aspects and trading character sheets with another player: a new Doctor gets a new actor.)

Tynam

That makes sense.

It's kinda brilliant, actually.

(Excuse if I get slow replying; moving around prepping costume for a party tonight.)

BESW

Basically it's a hybrid, crossing concession with extreme consequences.

The Doctor can use an extreme consequence (permanently change a character aspect) to concede through regeneration (after rolling defense, which is normally not allowed) rather than using it to absorb 8 shifts of stress as normal.

Tynam

Makes sense.

BESW

You'll notice that I give relatively detailed character bios, with quotes: this is because most of my players were unfamiliar with Classic Who.

I tried to give them enough of a sense of the character that it'd be recognisably that character, but leave enough room for them to take it in their own direction.

Hence the blank fifth aspect and third stunt, and only filling in three approach ranks.

(That's a trick I picked up from the Aeon Wave adventure.)

I chose the character quotes especially carefully, and spent a couple weeks fine-tuning the aspects.

Tynam

10:57

Yes - I've been using the "blank aspect, stunt, lower skills" approach for all FATE pregens since seeing it in the Dresden demo adventures.

BESW

Oh, and we used a modified form of AITAS initiative which was a little awkward, but really helped set the tone.

I'd start a round calling for who wanted to talk: when all the talkers were done, we'd move to "who wants to run?" and so forth down to the fighters.

Tynam

The initiative system is by far the most important mechanic in AiTaS. The rest of that system is standard, but the init makes the world work.

BESW

It slowed things down and was a bit confusing, but it set the tone for proper Doctor Who conflict.

Our plot was that the TARDIS got a distress call which led them to a 1980s London shopping mall where people were being mind-controlled by their pocket radios, through Auton earphones using Cyberman tech which picked up a Nestene broadcast.

In the big final battle, the Brig reversed the polarity of the mind-control device and the feedback made the Nestene Consciousness (the tentacley kind from the Third Doctor) blow up, while Leela was skewering the Doctor.

Now they have to figure out who sent the distress call, and why there were two voices on the mind control channel (one sounded like the Old Spice Guy, and one was more excitable), and why the NC was using Cyberman tech to control people--that's not its usual MO.

Tynam

...sounds fun.

(In our last game, a bunch of Weeping Angels dumped the party - a UNIT alien misfits squad - back into UNIT's early days. Since most of our characters are *really inhuman*, being shot by our allies before we could get help and get back was the big issue.)

BESW

Oh dear.

Tynam

11:06

...I think it was the GMs revenge on us, for taking the concept "UNIT squad" and giving her a party with only one human in it...

BESW

This is the spoilery backstory to my campaign, if you're interested. (Can't say it here because some of my players frequent this chat.)

@Tynam Heheh.

Tynam

Thanks. I'll read - I always enjoy hearing your work.

BESW

@DigitalBrain Hi!

Tynam

Oh, that's fun. Good idea, BESW. I look forward to hearing how it ends.

BESW

[grin] Glad you like it.

The underlying "plot twist" is a concept I've been toying with for some time, just as my own personal headcanon for the show.

So when I got the opportunity to run a Doctor Who game--well, I figured this gives a chance to do a lot of the "Special Episode" sort of stuff with teamups (like all the different companions) and classic villains re-imagined and so forth.

It also gives me a good reason to ban my players from playing New Who companions, because most of them don't work very well outside of their own narrative season arcs.

Tynam

11:13

Works for me. (And yes, New Who companions are mostly *very* tied to their specific plots. Clara's kind of useable anywhere, but she's also kind of vague. Martha and Jack are the only ones who are really flexible, full characters.)

So yes, the GM was... a bit surprised... by our char gen. We hadn't conferred enough, and three characters were *individually* reasonable, but pushing it in aggregate.

Our 4-person UNIT squad has an Ood, a teleporting blue centaur-like life form (doing his anthropology postdoc), and a strange coral-like thing. And one hapless Lt. trying to stay in charge...

BESW

@Tynam It has been my experience that players will almost always gravitate toward the most complex character options.

Tynam

Mine certainly do ;)

BESW

This is one reason, I think, that Atomic Robo places several narrative barriers between players and Weird mechanics.

It makes sure that you have a good story reason to be using the fancy mechanics.

Tynam

The GM had her story reason / petty revenge on me for the teleporting centaur tech with absolutely the best character drawback I've ever roleplayed: Anthropology student.

I get to look blue, have six limbs (the midlimbs can be used as hands or legs, depending), and have a short-range-teleport defensive reflex. But the character's here doing an *anthro study* on how a primitive culture handles first contact. So if I interfere with their decisions on how to handle aliens, my research funding gets pulled...

BESW

Heheh.

Tynam

11:17

...and I'm stranded on an alien world with no research career and crushing student debt.

BESW

For Atomic Robo, Trogdor is going to be playing a radiobiologist who turned himself into a plant monster.

And Doppelgreener will be playing the plant which the scientist turned humanoid as proof-of-concept before he did it to himself (because he's not a mad scientist; you do tests first, and you don't use humans for testing!).

2

Doppelgreener's humanoid plant will have an aspect like Transfer student of the human condition, representing that she studies human behaviour and society very closely, but is still not instinctive about it.

Tynam

That is brilliant.

(And solves one of my pet peeves... the "mad scientist" who is actually just a mad engineer.)

BESW

Trogdor's plant monster studies the effects of radiant energy on biology, with an emphasis on sunlight and plants.

trogdor

monster? thanks for the racisim

Tynam

Hi @trogdor.

trogdor

11:21

hello

I have been only paying a little bit of attention to chat

BESW

.jpg

Whoops.

trogdor

But saying my name, talking about a system I am interested in, and bringing up one of my characters kinda got my attention

Tynam

... a live game I was at two years ago pulled a great trick by using "monster" exactly that way. All players were briefed to treat "monster" as just like being "Jewish" or "French".

BESW

Trogdor's character is going to wear this (and probably have it as an aspect too):

Tynam

That is brilliant.

trogdor

11:26

I certainly liked it

BESW

We are probably also going to have a British superspy whose mother is in charge of the agency he works for.

trogdor

That would be awesome

BESW

I am going to have to work carefully not to make inadvertent Archer jokes.

Tynam

Yes.

You are.

@BESW: Well, thanks for the chat. Got to go work now... computers to fix, roleplays to write, and a costume to get ready.

BESW

@Tynam Always a pleasure. See you around.

doppelgreener

12:00

I was checkin' over the hack & slash skills again and remembered that notice "detects people using subtlety"

which is a general defence i'm ok with, but a lot of people will have notice around +3 to +5

... but that just means that to be properly subtle, you probably have to create a couple of advantages in your favour, i.e. must create conditions you can actually be sneaky under

which is a coincidence i like the results of

BESW

Also: specialists in subtlety will probably have stunts increasing its value.

doppelgreener

That's true!

doppelgreener

12:17

@BESW also on this, well, you could make them anyway. :)

BESW

@doppelgreener No rampages. No ocelots.

doppelgreener

12:33

@BESW right. yes, do them subtly. XD

BESW

13:13

Aspect for a conspiracy: The rich, the powerful, the lizard-men.

trogdor

@BESW I approve of this

And now I need to sign off for the day

need to sleep as soon as possible to get ready for the most busy Saturday I have had at least all year.

Stack Exchange

13:43

Evil Hat Productions: The Fifth Day of Halloween Week…and TREATS

posted on October 31, 2014 by Carrie Harris

On the fifth day of Halloween week, Evil Hat gave to me… five falling pixels (download Save Game!), four free giveaways (check out the lucky winners below!), three monster hunters […]

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